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Beeple 

Beeple is the alias of artist Mike Winkelmann, who works in the digital art and animation mediums. Famously prolific, he has been creating art every day of his life since May 1st, 2007, and posting it online for anyone to look at completely free. With millions of followers on Instagram and a bevy of collaborations with celebrities and high-end brand names, he is a well-known entity in digital art. When an NFT collage of his collected works, The First 5000 Days, sold for nearly USD$70 million at a Christie's auction in May 2021, it was a landmark event for digital art, announcing the arrival of NFT as a legitimate and high-powered new market for art and other collectables. 

Not only was the price tag of note, but the auction was done at Christie's, one of the world's premier auction houses, it was only sold as an NFT, with no accompanying physical object, and the payment was made in the digital currency— all of which signalled a shift in the possibilities for digital art and digital creators. Beeple's Everydays price shock made it clear that NFT will shape how digital art will licensed, sold, and resold in the future. In turn, this sparked a frenzy of interest in the NFT market, and a massive boom in NFT art collecting and subsequent sale of other artists NFT at Christie's, Sotheby's and an ever-growing number of online NFT marketplaces.